We Talk Over: Stadia Connect (06/06/19)

The catch is that all Stadia players MUST wear a hoodie, Tshirt, jeans, and sneakers while playing games.

This presentation was completely pedestrian. They kind of stuck with the "you can play games from any device" theme but I was hoping they go more into detail about the other cool things they mentioned in the launch presentation.

Where's the talk about the snapshot feature where a designer/player can save a snapshot and share it with others?

What about the asynchronous split screen functionality?

Where are the exclusive killer titles? Others than Baldurs Gate 3 and Glyt, everything else is stuff we've seen before.

Despite what I said, my coworkers were pretty stoked. It's a good deal if you aren't obsessed with high framerates. A $70 controller plus $10/month to play a set of games at up to 4k HDR 60 fps is pretty damn good compared to buying an XBox One X or PS4 pro for >$350 plus buying the games, plus dealing with downloading and installing updates.

My coworkers are the kind of players that just buy the latest CoD, FIFA and Madden, so if Google Stadia covers those games, I think they'll attract a bigger market than people expect.

The world has over 700 million people in it, I'm sure they'll be fine.

Your favorite, monopolistic, corporate overlords are here to vertically integrate every breath you take.

Uhhh just ignore the buffering, it fine. ITS FINE!

@scott ster said:

Vertically integrate every breath you take?

Vertically integrate every move you make?

Vertically integrate they'll be watching you...?

Definitely agree with Vinny about wishing they'd show some kind of technology demonstration that is not technically feasible with the usual internet peer-to-peer or client-server architectures. Without something legitimately new to be excited about (beyond the promise of convenience) I feel like this service is going to lack the goodwill from a vocal group of apologists to defend the inevitable hiccups a service like this will have. You don't want to have a situation where the word of mouth reviews boil down to "It's really convenient, except for when it's not".

I feel like there's going to be many bitter pills to swallow when households realize their internet connection struggles to cope with serving both Netflix and Stadia, on top of their normal smartphone/tablet usage.

ill save that 130 and put it toward a ps5 thanks!

@drfat32: I'm in Europe, Chromebooks have a 4% market share. And thats up from 1% a few years ago but only after they allowed local android app installs, because the always online model suuuuuuuucks.

To people rejecting this outright, do you feel the same way about streaming music and video? Or do you use YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix etc. like the rest of us?

Beforehand i expected this to get pretty huge in the mainstream. Being able to say 'oh wow,this new game looks great & i'll be able to play it on my devices as soon as i pay the 10$' would have been pretty great. Sadly, if you ever had that impulse, you need to make sure you have their 70$ ultra chromecast hooked up already & have a 70$ stadia controller laying around. And have to actually buy that new game you heard about. That all kinda ruins the mainstream impulse buy-in. Sure, if you already have a controller & a pc or laptop, you'll be able to use that, but not using their own controller might hamper you from playing the really input precise games. And at that point you probably have the means to get those games elsewhere. Buying the game to run natively on your hardware or stream it from a xbox gamepass-like service makes a ton more sense to me in this situation.

The thing with Stadia, is that it's quite a psychological punch to lose access to something you got used to; Something you put significant chunks of money towards. So once a subscription service is a success, increasing that price steadily is profitable because people have already invested heavily in the platform. They rather put an extra 60$ towards their annual subscription than to lose access to the hundred games they have on there.

But even if you're not using the stadia pro subscription, you're still dealing with 3 layers of companies to retain access to your purchased games. A telltale situation might take your bought game away. A publisher might take it's studio's elsewhere. Games might get rotated away from the platform once the licence runs out or it's no longer profitable to offer a certain game. These issues make me wary to ever get too deep into the Stadia platform. At Steam all these events would still give me access to the game i bought.

Luckily it seems like they're not throwing money out for exclusives, so the gamefiles will mostly all be out there. That will help us to preserve & mod the games. It's pretty funny that football manager is on here, immediatly making people realize that they won't be able to use it's years & years of mods. Without any mods, your Bayern Munchen reserve team won't even be able to play it's league games! We're talking about the highest tier of german football, officially licenced and all and you'll immediatly have to come to terms with the limitations of the base game on Stadia.

They do have the Stadia Games and Entertainment studio led by Jade Raymond to create a few exclusives. So if Vinny wants to see those 'games that only make sense on stadia' that's where i would expect it to come from.

I do wonder what multiplayer will be like. They have that low latency stadia-exclusive mode where you only play against other stadia users, but you also have the crossplay scene. What is the latency difference between those modes? Will people like Jeff absolutely hate this for bringing even more keyboard users in their console shooters and altering the online scene even more? Which disadvantages do you experience when you don't use the controller?

And while you don't need to buy a console, playing this thing on your 4k TV instead of a traditional console means that you're spending 120x5 (5 year pro access) + 70 (controller)+ 70 (chromecast ultra) = 740$ to play your games for the upcoming 5 years. Hopefully this service exists for decades and doesn't require any controller or chromecast upgrades in the next decade, but that's still quite a price.

Am I the only one that fully expected this to be a Netflix model? I'm quite surprised. I feel like a lot of people assumed that and haven't yet realised it's not because the messaging in the video was deliberately vague. Having to buy the games as well as have a subscription means it's just like all the other platforms, but always online. I don't see the appeal in that personally. I DO see the appeal in a Netflix for games, but I guess we're still not there.

@yyninja: you still have to buy the games on Stadia

Seems like Google has a real uphill battle with this one. Also I wonder how long before they get bored and shut it down like they've done with so many other experiments.

popular streaming services like Spotify & Netflix don't have their users pay for access & pay for content on top. They also don't require specific hardware to be bought to be a viable console alternative. That prevents stadia from being a fast, affordable & easy impulse buy for a mainstream audience.

Streaming in 4k sounds brilliant if it works as advertised, but I guarantee my ISP will be sending me letters in no time about the amount of data I'm using.

Could someone tell me why people think The Power of The Cloud is a real thing this time? The idea of a server farm rendering game features that your local machine couldn’t possibly handle has been promised before.

Microsoft couldn’t deliver on it. Why is assumed Google can?

Ok, but why am I paying $10 a month if I'm also buying the game? I don't get it. Doesn't Playstation Now already do all of this and you just pay the sub fee? This would be good if it were netflix style, but this seems like a trash deal for consumers, they're getting you on both sides.

Justice is a damn good last name.

@north6: It was my impression you only bought the games you wanted to keep, the same way you might buy a movie on Amazon or iTunes now, while streaming what you want from the streaming service(s) you subscribe to. It strikes me odd how natural this model is for movies and music, but is quickly rejected as a platform for games.

@unique: I thought you needed to buy them either way, only a couple games are available to play with the pro version (Destiny and ???). Bakalar's CNET video specifically says the "pro" video is not the netflix style / prime music / whatever itunes streaming is called style, you still have to buy everything AND pay the monthly fee to even play anything. I'm not sure what model this is comparable to, this seems new.

I'm a hardware enthusiast so hope this fails... so they make more consoles ?

I would have been more interested in this if it was a Spotify-esque service. As it stands right now with pay to access and buying a streaming title you have no way of knowing if it'll vanish some day, I'm not the target audience for this. Granted, I said similar things about buying games digitally a few years ago, so who knows what I'll be doing some years from now. I suppose the only difference is that I realized that if I buy a game digitally I could theoretically still store it locally somehow. With streaming there's no way to keep a game if they pull the plug on it.

looks like a trials game was in the montage. games that have a level editor like that one does, that is pretty robust would be interesting. seems like they could remove a lot of the size and complexity restrictions that a level editor in a game like that would have. imagine a 'game' like media molecules' dreams being on this platform. they could open up the creation side of things tenfold and add lots of more robust things(fluid engine maybe) without having to worry as much about maxing out what a console could handle.

google has to be working on some sort of vr solution that is able to utilize this tech. would be completely wireless and still have the feel of the high end pc experience.

If they want this to be widely adopted they're gonna have to start pushing back against data caps.

For everyone asking about pro vs base pricing:

As mentioned, it really depends on if it actually works flawlessly.